


The Ripple Effect

by RurouniHime



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Confessions, Dreams, First Kiss, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Limbo, M/M, Major Character Injury, Meta, Misunderstanding, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames has a problem. Therefore, naturally, they all have a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ripple Effect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snottygrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snottygrrl/gifts).



> This fic is NOT part of the Day Series; it is standalone.
> 
> For snottygrrl, with love. ^_^

Eames’ problem is, he can’t stand the idea of Arthur being intimate with anyone else.

Of course, Arthur can’t stand the idea of being intimate with anyone _but_ Eames, and if they just communicated a little, everything would be fine.

But they don’t communicate. It’s all their fault, which is why we have a plot. It is, incidentally, also why Cobb gets dragged out of retirement, why Eames pulls a gun on a guy he barely knows, and why Ariadne ends up all the way over in Lithuania with only Arthur’s luggage for company.

Woe.

Or, as Ariadne calls it, “You guys are pretty much completely idiotic. ...Except for that part where one of you almost died, sorry.”

Who almost died?

_Well._

**

(In the interest of full disclosure, it’s also a little bit Yusuf’s fault for introducing the entire scenario in the first place. But I’m willing to expunge his record and call him ‘matchmaker-by-proxy’ instead, if you are.)

**

Arthur’s biggest mistake is that he gets married. What’s more, he does it right where Eames can see.

It’s not Arthur’s fault, as he’s not aware of what’s happening. For starters, if Arthur had known he was getting married, he wouldn’t have gone in for a big white wedding, and he most certainly would not have purchased a sky blue tux with shawl lapel and ascot to do it in. Duh. Arthur’s more a courthouse type of guy: efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. And he already owns plenty of suits.

Of course, the most efficient wedding is the wedding that doesn’t exist, and since the forger responsible is even bigger on efficiency than Arthur (if that’s possible), she goes that route. 

Time is of the essence! Arthur and their extractor both have other jobs lined up in a mere three weeks! And the architect is already from Germany, so it just makes sense to circumvent Arthur’s niggling visa trouble by marrying him off to her.

It’s also especially efficient and favorable for the team dynamic if she doesn’t inform Arthur of any of this. He tends to get testy.

Naturally, when Eames gets the discouraging news, he checks it out. It’s been almost a year since he’s seen Arthur after all, and he’s a firm believer that you can’t con a con. But he doesn’t find what he’s hoping for because his female counterpart, while not quite as clean at the mental forging, is damn good at the physical stuff, and has fabricated all the proper paperwork, pictures, and IDs, plus a delightful courtship on the Riviera that fits in rather nicely with Arthur’s recent summer sojourn in France. Because _she_ is a firm believer in the best lie being the lie that is mostly true.

She even used Arthur’s café receipts.

Which isn’t fair at all. It’s dirty play, is what it is, and it’s totally convincing, and it absolutely lambasts, devastates and infuriates Eames in that order, and he does try everything he knows to discover the cracks in the façade, thanks for asking, but there just aren’t any.

He doesn’t call Arthur, which he could do but he really can’t because he’s afraid he might completely snap if Arthur does in fact confirm everything in that frank, flat tone of his, the tone Eames feeds off of with cheeky impunity on a daily basis. And confirmation is the only thing Arthur can offer, given the preponderance of evidence.

He most certainly will not stand hearing Arthur describe his bride-to— no, god, his _wife_. Because Eames does know of her, which means he’s met her once, and she’s not gorgeous in the classical sense, but who the hell is, anyway? She’s uniquely charming and strong and sarcastic and bloody talented. And if they’re already married, then there’s certainly been a wedding night, but Eames is willing to bet his totem it wasn’t the first time they _had relations_ , because Arthur ain’t no monk.

He’s… pretty sure. Actually, he and Arthur have never discussed that; if Eames ever uttered anything remotely unlike an innuendo about that particular subject, Arthur would likely call in an exorcist.

So now he’s got an upcoming job with most of the old gang, which he was looking forward to in the way a nine-year-old boy looks forward to a trip to EuroDisney where suddenly they’ve begun marketing chocolate bars as a dinner staple and school has just been outlawed as a major violation of human rights. He’s already committed to it, more’s the pity, and his code of ethics will not allow him to back out and leave them without his many talents for what promises to be a fairly risky venture. In short, he doesn’t trust anyone else with Arthur’s safety in such a situation, but now he’s beginning to wonder why he cares about that pompous arse at all, seeing as he can go and have an entire relationship behind everyone’s back.

He takes another job, a short, rough-around-the-edges one deep in the wilds of Uzbekistan, one that will end with a week to spare and give him an outlet through which to get rid of all manner of inner screaming. Eames is a _professional_ , damn it all to hell. He’s got to get this out of his fucking system before he sees Arthur.

(That’s, of course, assuming he can stomach looking Arthur in the eye at all in future, but Eames is steadfastly ignoring that scenario because he’s a professional, see above.)

It has absolutely _nothing_ to do with the fact that his point man for Uzbekistan is none other than the only person who stands a chance of unseating Arthur as the best in the field. He’s a hard-assed one-eyed SOB twice Arthur’s age, with an eidetic memory and a whole block named ‘CIA’ on his shoulder instead of just a stupid little chip. His name is Jarvis. Eames likes him better immediately because that will piss Arthur off good and proper later.

It might also be just a little genuine. What? Eames can relate: he’s a scarred veteran of Interesting Government-Funded Activities, too.

Meanwhile, Arthur is finishing up his latest gig, jotting the job down on the successfully completed side of his mental list, and getting on the plane for Lithuania to meet Ariadne and begin the lovely long process of laying groundwork. The only clue he has that anything’s amiss is a phone call from Yusuf as he’s walking down the gangplank, Yusuf, who says he wants to shoot the shit but really just wants to rant about the fact that some damn chemist named O’Dell has screwed with his perfect brew from the Fischer job and is saying he, Yusuf, is responsible for the subsequent drooling and extended recovery periods of those who use it.

Ergo, in exactly seven hours and seventeen minutes, a puzzled Ariadne pulls Arthur’s abandoned baggage off the conveyor belt, then gets on her cell to ask Arthur why he packed a banjo and if he’s going to be meeting her for their taxi ride sometime in the next decade, or if perhaps she should go have a drink in one of the airport’s bars instead.

When she doesn’t get Arthur or Yusuf or Eames on any line, she hems and haws for exactly twenty seconds before trying a number she hasn’t dialed since the Fischer job ended.

**

The Uzbekistan job goes a little not well.

Their mark is a complete sucker with a brain that’s easier to crack than a Swarovski crystal wine flute. In any other case, it would make Eames nervous, but the job was never supposed to be a tough gig, and his team’s pretty able-bodied, and besides, he’s distracted. By Arthur. By mentally comparing everything Jarvis does to the way Arthur would have done it, and reminiscing about bygone days with Cobb’s team when all he had to worry about was Arthur’s acid tongue, which he is more than capable of handling, thank you very much, and feeling sick to his stomach at the knowledge that that sort of camaraderie is pretty much a lost artifact at the dig site of extraction history.

He doesn’t make known aloud any of his Arthur-related pondering. He’s not stupid. Or that pathetic. He’s just not really bringing his A-Game either, and he doesn’t care too much about that fact.

Their first clue that something’s wrong is when the projections rouse themselves and target someone who is definitely not on their team. Since Eames did all the forging research, his first thought involves _oh shit_ and _fucked up_. He knows he hasn’t paid the most acute attention, and this could well be a family member of the mark, someone coming in to save him or oust them or whatever else, which means he’s topside and they need to get someone up there sharpish in case their architect is no longer in control of the situation.

So Eames pulls out his gun and shoots Jarvis in the head. He gets him out because, hell, he got him in. It’s only polite.

The next thing he doesn’t know, his body’s being pumped full of Somnacin’s mutant redheaded stepchild up top.

**

The thing about Jarvis is that he knows Eames, too. He knows Cobb— he’s pissed off at Cobb for fucking around with inception in the open so that every single worthwhile mark in the world is starting to gear up and militarize their brains— and he knows Yusuf— he _hates_ Yusuf for his responsibility in the assisted suicide of Jarvis’ Somnacin-junky half-sister a decade back— and he knows Arthur. Of course he knows Arthur, the little persnickety upstart who waltzed in at age twenty-two and swiped all his clients right out from under him. And kept doing it for the rest of, oh, forever.

He also thinks Eames is a bastard. He’d be right. But the most important part of this equation is the connection he has with a man named Perelli, for whom a younger, less worldly and certainly brattier Eames worked that one time when he impersonated the man’s dying mother and made off with the secrets of Perelli’s pharmaceutical company, subsequently selling them to MI-5 to stop Perelli from fucking around in the brains of teenagers with an aptitude for trouble and no one to speak on their behalf. Thus leaving Perelli bankrupt and hiding from the law for the next fifteen years.

So. There’s that. 

**

(This, by the way, is what happens when you make snap decisions based on the incorrect fact that the love-or-lust of your life has just gone and married someone who isn’t you.)

**

It’s pretty clear to Eames as soon as Perelli shows up that he’s fucked. His first thought is to shoot himself, too, but they’re on him before he can manage it. They take his gun and knock him upside the face with it, which doesn’t put him out, sadly. 

There isn’t any questioning, which Eames didn’t expect anyway. Only Perelli, looking like all his troubles have just been solved, and completely barking mad to boot. He’s brought friends, too, three of them, one of which is very good with his hands, especially when he has knives in them. Being slightly foggy from the blow to the head, Eames doesn’t win himself any medals in his attempts to fight them off, but he thinks he can be excused for that.

He’s starting to wonder whose dream he’s really in, which is… troubling.

Jokes don’t go over too well with Perelli or his blade-happy mate. It’s worse when Jarvis comes back down with a hello from O’Dell, and Eames realizes the true gravity of his situation.

**

It doesn’t take long to get nasty, and then it stays nasty for a long while. Nicely symmetrical.

They hit him. They kick him, too. They break a finger or three and bloody his nose and ears. And finally, they shoot him in the stomach, which is, all things considered, _really heinous_ , especially as a way to die. He’s unclear about why they’ve shot him, exactly, seeing as that’s the quickest way to get him out of all this, until he realizes all the noise from outside is not part of their game plan.

The door smacks open and Arthur strides in. Alone. It’s confusing, but not unwelcome _at all_. (The issue here is that it’s a little tough to find people in an already active dream when you didn’t go in alongside them, and currently, Arthur’s the only person searching this dream for Eames, as Yusuf is upstairs pointing a gun at Jarvis’ sorry head and Cobb is about two minutes from real-time arrival, and so Arthur has kicked the door in by himself, whether or not that’s a good idea. As you can see, time is again of the essence, so he can also be forgiven for not winning any medals.)

And Arthur sort of. Shoots or beats or stabs every last one of them. The final one— Eames’ favorite new friend— he gets a little creative with, appropriating his knives and spitting very colorful dialogue into his face just before he slams the guy’s head into the ground with both hands.

Now.

When people die in the dream and go up top, there’s this weird visual effect, like a ripple of hot air wafting up off the broken pavement of a highway in the middle of the desert. The colors bleed and the person sort of disintegrates as the dreamer lets him or her go, swirls and melts away in such a manner that when it’s over, you can’t quite remember the exact moment they vanished. It doesn’t happen right away, and most people miss it because usually when you kill someone in a dream, you don’t stick around for long afterward. But the fact is, once you get beyond the morbid angle, it’s kind of pretty.

And it doesn’t happen here. Eames knows because he likes the effect and he looks for it. These people just stay there, bodies on the ground, not breathing or disappearing or anything.

“Huh,” Eames says.

Arthur drops his latest victim like he’s already forgotten he exists and skids across the floor to Eames, dropping down on his knees in a puddle of water— or maybe it’s blood, Eames didn’t check— at his side.

“Hello,” Eames tries, but doesn’t hear anything remotely like that come out of his mouth, so.

“Eames, you son of a _bitch_ , what are you doing?” Arthur’s already ripping up that nice waistcoat of his, tearing sleeves from shoulder stitching, using his teeth to get things started.

“What’re _you_ doing?” Eames thinks he manages bewildered quite nicely. _And_ his speech is improving.

“Getting you the fuck out of your fucking mess of a fuck up,” Arthur grates around a mouthful of fabric. Arthur only cusses like an uncouth sailor when he’s _really_ upset about something. At least, Eames assumes so, having never witnessed this occurrence. Arthur then proceeds to tear open Eames’ shirt, which is quite a nice idea, only it’s just not morally defensible. Eames comments.

“You’re married, though.” Hey, to the pain, the segue makes sense, and Eames isn’t made of much else but pain at the moment.

Arthur’s eyes might bug out. A little. “What— shut up. _What_ the hell.” He wads up his bands of expensive suit and presses them to Eames’ bare stomach, and _fuck_ that hurts.

Eames feels like dying.

 _“No, don’t.”_ Arthur forces it out, a single word made up of two. His voice is suddenly very hoarse, very sober. There is almost no expression left on his face.

Eames proceeds to remind him that if he dies, he’ll just wake up. Arthur’s fairly frazzled for some reason, after all; he might have forgotten.

Arthur moves his hands to Eames’ cheeks, cradling his face firmly and wiping away blood from a head wound with the end of his thumb. “Listen to me, you cannot die. They dosed you with something bad up there, and if you die, you’ll slip and it won’t be up. Just hold out, till Yusuf says you’ve metabolized it and we can kick you awake again.”

Eames blinks.

“Did you hear me?” Arthur snaps.

Mostly he did. His mind is rattling on about _oh fuck_ and _Arthur, thank god,_ and _at least there’s this_. And stupid stuff about ‘here at the end of all things’ and ‘once more into the breach, my lover’ and he’d tell all that to Arthur because it would tick him off but good. That’s always fun to watch and Eames could do with a little humor right now. But then Arthur says something else.

“Eames? Not like this. Not on me.” 

It seems simpler to say yes.

He manages rather different words through a throat that is beginning to acquire a very strange and unsavory taste. “So you want me to suffer for your sake.”

Arthur laughs. If by ‘laugh’ you mean ‘makes a strangled sound and swallows half of it back down’. He wraps one hand around Eames’ side just above his hip, and the other over Eames’ shaking fingers. 

Or maybe it’s Arthur who’s shaking.

“Stay. Awake,” Arthur orders softly.

“Try my best,” he croaks.

**

They talk.

Which means Eames talks, and Arthur tells him continuously to shut the hell up. It works for them.

“Oh for god’s— what the hell do you keep going on about marriage for?” Arthur sounds exasperated. His hands are red with Eames’ blood, his hair falling into his face. He has a smudge of dirt on his left cheek. Or is that Eames’ left? Whatever. “Who’s married?”

“You are.” Obviously.

Arthur snorts violently, arching his head back to stare incredulously at… something, doesn’t matter. “I am _not married_ , where in the name of— Fuck, I am going to slaughter O’Dell for whatever he laced you with.” 

“Untrustworthy sot,” Eames coughs, and spits a little blood, which makes the lines around Arthur’s mouth and eyes sink that much deeper. “Remind me to…”

To…

“To what?” Arthur prods gently. Gentle looks good on him. It also looks a bit bizarre, but Eames thinks that’s because he was wholly unprepared for it and he’s lost about three pints of blood already.

Which, holy hell, that isn’t good. 

“Bleeding out,” he mentions.

“Yes, I am right here, Mr. Eames.” Ah, there we go, tart again. Much better.

“Why’re you here again?” Good idea to form coherent questions. It’s getting harder to speak as it is.

Arthur looks like he might want to slap him. Then again, Arthur always looks like that so maybe it’s his natural state. “Saving your ass, you ass. I wouldn’t think that was rocket science.”

And then Arthur blushes. It’s entirely possible Eames is hallucinating. He decides to test the theory.

“You’ve got red on you.”

Arthur glares. Extricates the sodden lump of suit from Eames’ stomach with much distracting agony (him) and drawn glowers (Arthur), and replaces it with a fresh bundle of cloth. Outside, the sounds of rioting are getting louder, uglier. Arthur leans back and shouts over his shoulder at someone to keep them the fuck out.

“Who?”

“Cobb,” Arthur says shortly.

“Cobb wants to get in?”

“ _No_ , Cobb’s the only thing between the projections and us,” Arthur snaps. “Would you just—”

“Cobb’s retired.”

Arthur doesn’t even bother to respond.

“Did he go to the wedding, then?”

“What the hell does ‘eeoouuaadingen’ mean?”

Bollocks, this is a lot harder than it was a half hour ago. Eames tries again, more slowly. Arthur snarls at him.

“Do not call me a wanker, Mr. Eames.”

Eames thinks about retracting it, but, no, that was entirely warranted. If he could just remember why— oh yes, that’s it.

A massive boom beyond the doors covers the sound of his voice, and Arthur lunges forward, shielding him with his body as plaster rains down from the ceiling. Oh, hell, this building wasn’t much to begin with; one good knock and it will fall down and crush them both.

“I said,” Eames repeats, “I’ll bet your wedding was fan-fucking-tastic.”

Arthur picks pieces of plaster out of Eames’ hair with a rusty-red hand. “If you weren’t injured and pumped full of drugs, I’d break your nose for being an imbecile. No one would blame me.”

The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire starts up, and Eames winces reflexively. Fuck. Even that hurts. He needs to think. What exactly would no one blame Arthur for again? Did Arthur do something wrong? Well, no, if they aren’t going to blame him, then... then…

Then Arthur is shaking him, hard enough to jostle his head, and Eames is blinking his eyes open and wondering why everything has gone so fuzzy.

“…mes, damn it, look at me! Eames!”

“Yes, darling,” he mumbles, feeling awfully dizzy, like his brain is rolling around inside his skull, but he’s awake, confound Arthur, why must he keep— “For the love of god, _s…top_.”

Arthur’s head dips, hanging on his neck like he can’t hold it up. “Eames,” he mutters, almost too quietly to make out.

“Arthur.” He works the name carefully around his mouth, all the bits and bobs inside, which seem to be all swollen or loose or… whatever.

“God, why the hell are you even in here?” Arthur sighs, glancing up at the failing ceiling. 

“Can’t work with you anymore, can I?”

It’s fascinating how Arthur reels himself back from whatever reaction that comment induced. But then Eames coughs, can’t stop, actually, and there’s really nothing that can get through the blinding white of that pain. By the time he’s done, Arthur looks…

Worried. That’s worry. The heavily understated type.

“Breathe, come on,” Arthur says, hoisting Eames’ shoulders off the ground into his arms until it passes, then letting him back down again carefully. Now he’s got blood all over his front. Is that all Eames’ blood? Must be, because if anyone has injured Arthur, Eames is going to—

“What did you mean, you can’t work with me?” Arthur isn’t looking at him, he’s casting around, sounds distracted. He finally shifts over until Eames’ head is cradled on the top of one thigh. Eames frowns. Reaches up to poke Arthur’s arm and misses by a mile.

“Your bloody fault.” He gets caught around— around something, and hacks again, but it’s short-lived. He can barely lift his head at all, can barely feel the weight of Arthur’s body beside him anymore. Keeps trying to raise his hand, feel around on his belly for what exactly is going on there.

Arthur’s eyes snap back to his, dark and hurt. “What did I do?”

 _Broke my heart. Had sex with someone other than me. Took yourself off the market and told everyone else about it. Are too damn sexy for words all the damn time. Don’t even wear your wedding ring in your dreams, it’s that wrong for you._ It’s probably a really good thing none of those make it out. “Got… married.”

Arthur stares at him, right into a moment of complete silence, and it’s like the entire planet has stopped just so Eames can hear the answer to his greatest accusation ever.

“You are the most… _What?_ ”

And how dare Arthur deprive him of that god-given right to an answer, how dare he withhold it even when all the cosmos thoughtfully prepared the vista for its presentation? Eames doesn’t realize he’s moving around until Arthur grabs onto him, panic strewn across his features like shattered glass, and holds him down by the upper arms, presses his body to the disgusting floor of this stinking hovel and shouts his name. _“Eames?”_

“Don’… _don’t_.” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, but Arthur pulls back a little, searching his face.

“Eames, are you—”

 _“Why her?”_ he begs. He’s past caring about being pathetic. Figures he’s already dipped well below that line, hemorrhaging in someone else’s peabrained… brain because he couldn’t be arsed to figure out there was a bounty on his head in time to save his own stupid life.

Arthur looks flummoxed. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

“You’re the one who got married!” It’s kind of a shout. Not really.

“Eames, I would never fucking get married,” Arthur growls, “because _you’d_ never— I— You know what, shut up. Just stop talking.”

“Make up your mind,” Eames enunciates. Slowly.

Outside the gunfire cuts off in a disturbingly abrupt way. Arthur’s shoulders shudder. 

“Just a few more minutes,” he says. His lips move around the words a second time. Eames isn’t sure who he’s talking to. “ _Come on_ , Eames.”

Arthur’s eyes flick again and again to the area of Eames’ abdomen. And now he knows it’s bad, because he can’t feel anything down there anymore, not the pain, not the damp, not Arthur’s hand pressed over the wound. Can’t even be sure he has a wound any longer.

“Haven’t played limbo since I was a kid,” he slurs.

Arthur’s lips pinch tight. “Shut your mouth,” he whispers. The pressure of his hand increases just a touch, like a faint, faint twinge somewhere in the universal void underneath his gut.

He does. And then, despite the frantic way Arthur is speaking to him, the way he’s shaking him again, his wounds shut it more permanently.

**

He doesn’t see the part where Arthur shoots himself awake. Nor does he witness Arthur launching himself out of his chair, grabbing Yusuf by the shirt, and threatening him to within a single nanometer of his existence, past, present, and future, if Yusuf doesn’t pump him full of that horrid Somnacin cocktail and put him under again.

Eames doesn’t see any of that because he’s busy flopping around in the sand getting salt water in interesting places, and generally cursing beaches everywhere.

**

(For the record, Arthur does not in fact get his way with the evil uber-drug. For one thing, it makes no sense. For another thing, Cobb drags him off Yusuf, punches him once across the cheek, and sets about _informing_ him of why it makes no sense, before personally giving him a dose of regular Somnacin and a pep talk that consists of _Now get him the fuck out of there_ , and shoving him back into the dream before following him in.)

**

Meanwhile, Eames gets forty years older. It’s sort of boring.

Except for how he’s absolutely plagued with abdominal pain that just gets worse and worse as the years go on. 

And worse.

**

He’s walking along the beach in a hunched up manner that cradles his stomach on the day that a boy from his past stumbles out of the surf, soaked from head to toe, wearing a once-white dress shirt that has bright red stains over the arms and trunk. His trousers cling firmly to the outline of his thighs and hips, swaying drunkenly around his calves as the sea sheets off. His hair is slicked tight to his scalp and face, water dripping from his lips and eyelashes and chin and fingertips. He is utterly striking. Sublime.

Eames stops where he is and stares, remembering things he’d forgotten, things he thought he’d embellished, things he’d wanted to get his hands on and his mouth over, things he’d wanted to say, things he’d wanted to hear, and he stumbles backward onto his arse right there in the sand, reminded as well of a physical pain he’d almost convinced himself wasn’t real.

_Gun. Shot. Fire._

Gone.

Arthur staggers to him, nearly falling as his ears sort themselves out. He’s so… so beautiful. So young, perfect and imperfect at the same moment. Eames stretches a hand out, afraid if he touches, if he actually comes into contact with this eidelon, it will vanish into the air in razor sharp ripples of heat.

It’s Arthur’s hand that finds his first, shocking with static or something else— Eames thinks it’s something else— and closes almost too tightly. Arthur sways into him, collapses onto his knees either side of Eames’ legs, and drops forward, spilling Eames back onto the sand. Eames lands with a grunt and a hiss, and Arthur is immediately up, scrabbling at his shirt, pulling it open at its last three buttons. There’s a joke there somewhere, as wispy as mist.

He’s bleeding. He can’t tell from where, but there it is, vibrant red in the washed out light.

Arthur’s hand pressing over the spot feels like it’s coming home.

“Eames?”

That. That voice. He gives up, traces a line down Arthur’s face from temple to chin, watching as the water wicks away and beads back in the path of his fingertip. He can feel the huff of Arthur’s breath over the skin of his thumb.

He’d thought for ages that he was living in a dream, only to suddenly see his mistake when the real dream appears before him. For an instant, he is so sure.

“Running late, darling,” he croaks. Hasn’t used his voice in ages, stopped talking to himself long ago, _never_ spoke a word to the fools that killed him and plunged down here before him, though they’re around here somewhere.

“You make a good looking old man, Mr. Eames,” Arthur pronounces, very softly. Almost as if he has forgotten he’s speaking. It’s like bathing in a sea of lotion, hearing his voice, all the inflections returned again, the way his mouth shapes the words. The way his throat ripples silently under its sheen of saltwater and sand as he swallows.

Eames’ stomach hurts.

“Come with me?” Arthur asks, sounding as sorrowful as a child. _On a merry chase_.

“Anywhere, darling.” He doesn’t know where these words are coming from, only that they are appropriate. He doesn’t know where they’re going, where there is to go. There’s just this beach, those hills, that sparkle of rock down the coast. He hears music, another memory long lost, and it swings back to him like a planet in orbit, inexorable and certain and familiar.

“Oh,” he breathes.

Arthur smiles. He holds up his left hand, one finger tilted away from the rest, and for some reason Eames can’t remember, its bareness settles something that has been churning in his soul for ages, unknown.

Arthur leans forward as slow and inevitable as that planet, and kisses Eames on the mouth. That right there should be a kick all on its own, the way it drops his stomach out from under him, deep into the sand, into the bedrock, and wait, a kick? He—

**

He opens his eyes to a blurry ceiling. Which isn’t blurry as much as nondescript, but he recognizes it from another time. Another life. Yusuf’s face, leaning close over his, changes quite noticeably and he says some stuff, mutters other stuff, and calls out for someone out of Eames’ line of sight. His belly feels like it is hollow, reacting to agony that just isn’t there anymore. He hears what he thinks are Cobb’s dulcet tones.

There’s a shuffle and a thunk, then Yusuf leans away and _Arthur_ replaces him, dear, beautiful Arthur, crawling up to the side of his chair and taking his face in both hands again. This time Eames notices the utter warmth of Arthur’s palms, the way they shake, the pressure of each and every finger, even the scent of Arthur’s skin. He reaches up, needs to touch quite badly, and fits his hand around one of Arthur’s, the backs of his own fingers pressed cold against his cheek. 

“Well. That is just fucking _it_ , Mr. Eames,” Arthur whispers. Arthur, whose voice trembles. Who looks more bone weary than Eames has ever seen him. Whose eyes dart continuously back and forth between Eames’, searching for something they just don’t find. 

He leans down— droops. Rests his forehead on Eames’ and exhales.

**

He’s a long time shaking that fucker of a drug off.

Is this what it feels like, to live a life and then to jerk back into another, re-taste, re-think, re… whatever-the-fuck? He can’t be bothered one minute, and the next he’s fascinated, reveling in limbs that were never not young to begin with, but oh, here they are again, _lord_ , how he’s missed them. And it’s already fading, a dream slipping free in direct counterpoint to how desperately he grasps at it, which is just fine, as he didn’t like that dream anyway so why the hell would he want to go back there? 

He thinks it could do a number on a person, this life-dreaming. He thinks of Cobb and the wife he only knew as an acquaintance, and thinks he understands the shadows in both their eyes, because even the fake-Mal _remembered_.

O’Dell looks awfully pitiful trussed to his chair and bloodied up with the imprint of Yusuf’s fists, and Jarvis… Ah, Jarvis. Thou shalt not tangle with enraged point men who are most definitely better than you and are under the impression that you are personally responsible for the most grievous injury ever done them.

The one and only time Arthur stepped away from him. It was like watching a revenge flick. Eames had wished for popcorn, honestly. Arthur had come rushing back when Eames tried to actually get some, though, full of the most delectable vitriol Eames has heard since Perelli found out what he’d done a decade and a half ago. Seems longer.

The long and short of it is thus: in no uncertain terms, Eames will remain in this chair until their “damn chemist” declares him “fucking fit to stand the fuck up on his own fucking feet, Mr. Eames, just give me an excuse to knock you flat because _I will_.” 

Eames wants to kiss him. Tongue that filthy, thin-lipped mouth until it runs out of injurious words and then tongue it until it’s chock full of them again, and just see what broody, irritated, _unmarried_ Arthur has to say about that.

It’s been explained to him, through various irate phone calls during which Cobb ranted and raved at Arthur’s lady forger around Jarvis’ sad little HQ, and Eames can’t even begin to think what everyone’s opinion of him is now, but he’s still too loopy to care all that much, so full steam ahead, Cobb, rant and rave about why your forger is a complete numbskull. There’s some not-insignificant yelling from Arthur over that phone, too, but mostly it’s Cobb, and it’s nice to see a little life in their old extractor that isn’t driven by the devastating foundational stones of guilt and grief.

Perelli and his light-fingered friend are never coming out of their comas, because not one person in this room cares about them enough to go get them. Or to tell anyone about their predicament. C’est la vie. And there are other people slouched in other chairs now, people Eames never even knew were there, waiting for him to go under. Yusuf is still deciding whether or not he feels like feeding them intravenously. It’s a lively debate.

(They do revive the mark because it’s not his fault he’s a patsy.)

Either way, Uzbekistan has long since worn out its welcome, and all fancy commercials aside, Eames really can’t get any decent sleep in this lounge chair.

“You know, I vote for a hotel,” he puts forth when another hour has gone by. Yusuf looks him over, then he is subjected to Cobb’s critical eye, and that’s saying nothing of Arthur. Eames won’t look at what Arthur’s face is doing. He doesn’t enjoy feeling nervous.

All the same, he gets up with their blessing, makes it three steps, drops sideways, and Arthur is there, insinuating himself under Eames’ left shoulder and sliding an arm around his lower back. Hanging onto his other wrist in the most casual of grips to the outer eye but what is in reality the most grounding force Eames has experienced in seven decades.

Or. 

Eh, he’s too tired.

Arthur piles them into a taxi and gives directions to somewhere fun. Eames slumps low in the backseat and keeps checking his stomach, drifting his fingers over it like there might be something there on the next pass, only there isn’t. He’s still muscular, still fit, experiencing a weird sort of sloughing like he’s just had a bad flu and even though his body hasn’t changed, he can’t use any of those muscles for what they were meant to do at the moment.

He catches Arthur watching him seven times, and smiles back at each one. To which Arthur responds by turning away with a huff. It’s the best kind of clockwork.

Once they reach the hotel in question, a huge, prissy monster that Eames adores immediately, Arthur takes them to a room on the third floor— is it third or fourth in this part of the world?— and Eames realizes Arthur rushed straight to him when he arrived. Where is his clothing? Belongings? Anything? Because Arthur must have other nice clothes, it’s the main export of his metaphorical country. But either he’s left them with Cobb or left them behind, because there’s nothing, just the cramped loo, the single bedroom, and a kitchenette that might as well not be. Not that Eames gets a good look at any of it save the bedroom: by now, his knees are like jelly, and Arthur settles him on his back across the mattress with the pillows under his head, shuts the door, pulls the curtains against the waning daylight, then turns, pointing one elegant finger straight at Eames’ head. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

His voice holds such gravity it is as if he has sworn all the way through that sentence, cursed up such a streak the room is royal blue with it.

“You, on the other hand, can do that to me any time you like,” Eames says, meaning of course, _saving my life. Following me in. Coming after me like I matter to you._

_Kissing me like ‘matter’ doesn’t even begin to cover it._

Arthur is expressionless.

“I missed you,” Eames says. It’s slipping out like the seawater slipped down Arthur’s skin, the one concrete image he has left of Limbo. Incidentally, the one that heralded its destruction.

This time, Arthur’s face does something funny, a strange sort of ripple, and for an instant, Eames is terrified he’s about to wake up again.

He coughs, his body heaves against the notion, and Arthur is next to him before he can blink, a steadying hand flat on his upper chest. “Eames,” he admonishes lowly.

“Fine,” he says when he can. Arthur’s still here, still warm.

“You’re an idiot,” his companion seethes after the moment wherein Eames catches his breath. The same sharp discrimination of sound that always makes Eames think of a barely capped pipe simmering with puffs of steam when he looks at Arthur and finds him less than forthcoming, or communicative, or open. Arthur’s shoulders have tensed, but he is gazing away, his jaw as tight as ever, and his hand hasn’t moved. 

Scratch that: one finger taps against Eames’ sternum, a brisk, harried cadence like the patter of a mouse’s heart.

“While I’m certain that’s true—”

Arthur rounds on, shoving him to the mattress and leaning in close with enough acid in his eyes to burn right through all of Eames’ clothing and down to the box spring to boot. His hands clench in time with his words. “You— do not— _ever_ —”

Eames grabs a handful of that lovely, out-of-place hair and pulls him down to meet him opened mouthed, halfway through a frigid curse, and _then_ , oh, then Arthur kisses him like he’s climbing into him, folds his whole body forward and cuts his teeth across Eames’ lip and seals it while breathing in long and hard through his nose as if smelling him, all of him at once.

“Not _married_ , you fucking ass,” right across his tongue.

“Fucking,” Eames breathes, “and ass…”

“No. You died in my arms today, Eames, _no_.” Arthur actually holds a finger up between them, right between their noses. It’s so endearing Eames arches his neck, pushes it out of the way with his lips, follows it up to Arthur’s mouth again. 

And Arthur makes it clear that what he’s against is not the act, merely the joke.

~fin~


End file.
